FOXBORO — Soon enough, Drake Maye’s late interceptions will be treated for what they are.
Mistakes that cost the Patriots games. Mistakes that deserve second and third helpings of blame pie.
But not yet.
Because as a rookie quarterback with six career starts and virtually no help, Maye deserves some grace. Even praise. Before he launched another game-ending pick, Maye was one of the few reasons his team stayed competitive.
Otherwise, the Patriots got out-coached against the Rams. They lost the line of scrimmage. They had a crucial extra point blocked and committed penalties, left and right, that in the end had a 28-22 loss feeling about right.
So even if Maye held the dagger at the end, the right thing to do was wonder: who forced the kid to hold a knife in the first place?
Well, that would be Jerod Mayo, who otherwise seemed unconcerned with weapons of any kind, given Rams receivers Puka Nacua and Cooper Kupp ran wild through his secondary all afternoon.
And even though he’s also a rookie, Mayo is not owed that same grace because he should know better.
Over eight seasons as a player and five more as an assistant, Mayo learned at the Bill Belichick School of Defense, where commandments hang in every room, and somewhere below Do Your Job and Ignore the Media, it reads: Make the Opponent Play Left-handed.
The idea being, every game plan must start with eliminating an opponent’s strength. It’s an ancient idea, one Belichick stole from Sun Tzu, and it’s simple; like the scouting report on the Rams.
Kupp and Nacua are two of the best receivers in the league. Los Angeles loves throwing to them. Ask anyone, and they are the chief strength of the Rams’ offense.
Yet after weeks of tasking shutdown corner Christian Gonzalez with shadowing No. 1 receivers, the Patriots didn’t assign Gonzalez to either Kupp or Nacua. They parked Gonzalez in the boundary, or short side of the field, for the entire game. While that strategy worked in Chicago, where losing to the Patriots caused the Bears to fire offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, Mayo wasn’t staring across from a dead play-caller walking Sunday.
This was Super Bowl-winning coach Sean McVay, who exploited Mayo’s defense for four straight touchdown drives around another possession that ended in a chip-shot field goal try just before halftime.
“You know, they just — they saw what we were doing,” Patriots safety Jaylinn Hawkins told me. “They were working their plan, certain routes were getting changed, (receivers) breaking off our leverage, depending on where (the defense) was in man (coverage). They had a pretty good game plan.”
After punting twice in the first quarter, the Rams motioned Nacua away from Gonzalez on the opening play of their third drive. Gonzalez stayed put, Nacua ran his route against lesser players and picked up a 25-yard catch. At the end of the drive, Kupp caught a 5-yard touchdown, again working away from Gonzalez.
Did the Patriots adjust? No.
Nacua beat veteran corner Jonathan Jones for a 12-yard touchdown on the very next series, and Kupp later took another turn, blazing by Jones for a 69-yard score in the third quarter. Worst of all, the Patriots didn’t double-team either receiver all game.
Not once, as far as
“We had some schemes and some stuff planned with certain things, but we didn’t really have certain players that we were doubling,” Hawkins told me. “There are certain schemes and ways we can help (defenders) out. So we didn’t do any double calls today. We did that.”
By the end, Kupp and Nacua combined to see more than 70% of the Rams’ targets. They piled up 229 yards. They scored three touchdowns, and hardly had to worry about the one player who could have slowed them down.
“Gonzalez is the real deal, does an excellent job, and I think it worked out that way,” McVay said of avoiding the Pats’ No. 1 corner “There were some instances where we said if you can avoid him, let’s go ahead and do that.”
At best, this was coaching arrogance; Mayo and his staff having irrational belief in players like Jones and Marcus Jones, who saw most of Nacua and Kupp. It happens every week in the NFL. To some degree, it’s understandable, even forgivable.
But at worst, this was coaching conceit; not only misevaluating talent on both sidelines, but maintaining you know best despite damning evidence to the contrary. Again, the Rams essentially ripped off five straight scoring drives, during which time they averaged 9.9 yards per play.
And Mayo believed the Patriots were in the driver’s seat then, even as they trailed for the last 35 minutes of the game.
“I never really felt like they had control of the game,” he said post-game. “I felt like we had control of the game.”
So forgive me if I, again, forgive the kid who threw the game away. Maye will grow, and at least he’s taking accountability.
“(It) just goes back to me during the week doing more, talking through different situations,” Maye said of his interception. “That’s about it.”
But ask Mayo if he regretted his coverage plan and …
“Look, going into the game, we have a plan, and we’re always willing to change that look. Like I said earlier, I felt like we were going to be OK,” Mayo said. “I thought we could outlast them”
Well, think again.
